The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (38 page)

Oddly, she was in complete sympathy with his shenanigans, for he behaved exactly as she would have if Fanny and Miss Christie had not dampened her spirit. The only difference between herself and Gustave was that he expressed his ardor. Adorably. Inspiringly. If only she might act so free, so true to her nature! Furthermore, since he didn’t bother to hide his foolishness, she was inclined to trust it, and thereby trust
him
. How could she not trust a man who had confided that he patronized brothels?

In the afternoon, when the road dipped and flattened into a pattern
of ridges like a seabed, he howled again and galloped off. In his wake, salt air arrived on a gust, and Koseir nudged the horizon in a dazzling white clump like a toy city. This time he returned content to parade with the rest of them as the road narrowed into the dusty main street of the town. They passed merchant stalls and cafés where men smoked narghiles and played backgammon at small wooden tables. At the last row of houses before the sea, the Arabs deposited them in the street, arranged the camels in a train, and bid farewell, calling loudly to each other as if to celebrate the end of a long enforced silence. Gustave stood silently in the road, looking dazed.

Her feet swollen and half numb after so many hours in the saddle, Flo felt light as thistle down. Each step she took was an unpredictable experience—as if a puppeteer were controlling her limbs from above, she explained to Trout. “And how do you feel?” she asked.

“Like I’m made of India rubber, mum.” Trout ventured small, wobbly steps, like a tightrope walker. “I can’t get purchase. It feels like I’m still riding the beast.”

Flo laughed.

Just then, Père Elias greeted them in the street. Flo could not help gawking: he was the exact double of Père Issa, down to his beard and braided leather sandals. And his hands? Yes, the same peculiar nail flourished on his pinkie. Gustave had promised to explain it but never had. She must ask him again.

“My brother did not tell you we were twins?” Père Elias inquired of his startled guests. “Our mother dressed us alike in every detail. She was determined to make us undistinguishable so Father would not know which one to beat.” He laughed. “I like to think that though we live apart, we still dress alike, not so difficult in the Orient because one doesn’t wear much.” He lifted the hem of his pelisse to illustrate his point.

“And you have the identical occupation,” Max said as they followed him inside. “Both French consuls.”

“I think you’ll find we’re very much alike.” He ushered them into his villa and ordered his houseboy to make coffee.

They sorted out the sleeping arrangements, and a servant took the bags and parcels to their rooms. Joseph retired to the veranda, where a hammock awaited him. Flo followed the consul into the salon.

She and Trout sat upon one divan, Gustave and Père Elias on another. Max, hypervigilant about breakage, toted the photographic equipment himself. She heard him repeatedly struggling up the stairs.

An exchange between the men proceeded in rapid French. Père Elias inquired about friends and kinsmen in Kenneh, but after a fusillade of names, it turned out they knew no one in common but his twin. Flo kept her gaze elsewhere, preferring to study her surroundings rather than join the conversation.

Divans with pillows in the Ottoman style lined the sitting room, while fringed carpets in shades of red, cream, salmon, and blue overlapped on the stone floor. Against the stark white walls, the effect was beautiful, like an indoor garden. Brass trays and bowls, placed about for decoration, glowed like patches of sunlight in a shady glen. She made a mental note to buy brassware gifts.

Trout was drifting toward oblivion, her head lolling to one side, her eyelids fluttering shut. As Flo watched her, she felt a stab of envy, the emotion she most detested in herself. Why did a lowly servant enjoy peace of mind while she was deprived of it? Other than simple chores, Trout didn’t have to lift a finger, relying on the others for every need. She didn’t have to communicate with anyone but Flo, whose concentration was excruciatingly punctured by overheard smatterings of conversations and the babble of vendors and beggars. Cocooned in a noisy silence, Trout, on the other hand, could relax into a state of carefree helplessness.

The problem, Flo knew, was that she liked to be in charge, and even when she wasn’t, she followed events as if she were. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust people to do their jobs; she simply knew she could do them better. But being responsible was as often a torment to her as a joy. She paid for whatever confidence and power it bestowed with exhausting, unrelenting vigilance. Lately, observing Trout, she had begun to wonder what it would be like to entrust herself to another’s
care, body and soul. Wasn’t that what she had tasted the first evening with Gustave on the houseboat when she felt herself shrink until she was pleasantly small? And in the cave at Philae, too, while he sprawled next to her, radiating warmth? Surely that liquefying sensation of ease had something to do with wishing to yield herself to another.

Trout snorted. Her eyes flew open, then shut. The men chuckled, nodded at Flo, and resumed talking.

Max returned and took a seat between the two pairs. “What have I missed?” he asked her. A droplet of sweat coursed down his cheek and was sucked up by his collar. “What have they been talking about?”

“You shall have to ask Gustave,” Flo replied.

“You didn’t hear them?”

It was rare for Max to press. Usually he was the epitome of coolness, a French version of the Poetic Parcel now that she thought about it, though Richard had redeeming qualities Max probably lacked—interest in the poor, for one. “I’m afraid I was resting.”

“Ah,” Max said. “You must be tired.” He reached forward and patted her arm. “But Trout is sawing lumber for the gods!”

Flo’s heart pounded as jealousy stabbed and stabbed. It was so unjust and ridiculous that she envied Trout. Trout, who went everywhere alone—to the dentist, to the pub, on the train to Ryton. Were Flo to suffer a toothache, at least two people would accompany her to the dentist—Fanny, out of solicitude, and Parthe because she could not tolerate Flo’s going anywhere without her. “I’m sure you have no idea how I feel, Max.”

He leaned back. He fiddled with the top button of his shirt. “I hope I have not given offense in some way.”

She sighed, close to tears. “Forgive me, I
am
tired.” Which was a lie. Fueled by frustration, she could have sprinted into the street and screamed. Or, like Gustave, howled.

“Is anything amiss?” Gustave asked.

Was there a universally disquieting tone in human speech, she wondered, for the other two turned to her and Max as if an alarm had been raised.

“I was just teasing Miss Nightingale about her maid.” Max pointed to the sleeper, whose fitful snoring now sounded like the buzzing of a fly trapped at a window.

“You must all be fatigued from the journey,” Père Elias observed. “Would you care to retire to your rooms? We shall not dine until after dark.”

“Though I, for one, am about to drop,” Gustave said, “I want to walk on the beach. The Red Sea! Perhaps I could take a plunge—”

“The water is still cold at this time of year,” said Père Elias. “But the tide is out and if you go north, toward Old Koseir, you will find seashells just inside the cove.”

“Then I shall wet my toes. Who wants to come along?”

“I do.” Flo’s hand shot up like one of the boys in her Ragged School classroom. Fanny was right: too much enthusiasm. She was sure she was flushing.

“I’ll stay here,” said Max, patting his dyspeptic belly.

“Hakim, my houseboy, will go with you, if you desire.” Père Elias indicated the boy serving them thimblefuls of coffee in small white cups.

At the threshold of manhood, with a tall, long-limbed body, the boy still had the dewiness and brightness of a child. Flo had never seen such luxuriant eyelashes, pointy clumps of them, like shiny feathers. His skin was flawless as a newborn’s except for his upper lip and jaw, where the first down had sprouted in sparse patches. Rather like Parthe’s, she realized with dismay. Did a woman dare shave her face?

“We will be fine alone,” Gustave said. He polished off his coffee in one swallow.

“I need my bonnet,” Flo said. “I shall meet you in a moment.” She gently shook the maid, who came to consciousness reluctantly.

Trout had no interest in seeing the water. “I shall stay, mum, and unpack your things for the night.”

“That is kind.” As Trout awakened, Flo noticed her anger subsiding, as if it were the idea of Trout more than the actual person that annoyed her. “But then you must rest. It’s plain you are sleepy.”

Trout rubbed her eyes with both fists, like a baby. “That I am.”

• • •

As they descended the slope from Père Elias’s garden to the shore, the sky turned a lambent green. Flo stopped to retie her hat, stalling as she watched the bilious color scud above the whitecaps in streaks and fumes. On the second day in the desert, the sky had turned the same putrid shade before the wind picked up, wailing like a banshee and charging the air with grit.

“Shall we go then, Rossignol?” Gustave asked.

“I think a storm is coming. Perhaps another khamsin.”

“I wouldn’t worry.” He pointed down the beach. “It’s clear to the north, where we’re headed.”

They had taken refuge under whatever they could grab while the camels hunkered down, their backs to the wind, and sand heaped up around them. Flo had watched through a tear in the scratchy blanket until abruptly, as if someone had closed a chute in the sky, the khamsin ceased. Then just as they stood up, there had been another flash of green followed by hail the size of English peas. And the sound! Like a war. An assault by a thousand drummers, each pounding a different rhythm—

“Let’s walk toward the clear,
chèrie
, and find those shells.”

The green patch was scuttling southward, propelling itself like an octopus. The sun blinked on. “I’ve been collecting shells since I was a little girl.” She followed him to the edge of the water.

After he removed his boots, tied the laces together, and slung one shoe over his shoulder, he rolled his trousers and stepped into the surf. “This is bliss!” he shouted. “We have arrived in Paradise.” A groan issued from deep in his throat as he waded in.

It was thrilling to watch him relish each new sensation, to see his thick, strong feet with their long toes, the tournure of his calves, and the light brown hair on them, which she had a sudden desire to pet.

They continued walking, a wide swath between them—he in the surf, she on the damp packed sand of the tidal zone.

“These little waves nip like kittens,” he said. “Cold teeth, though.”

Immediately the spume solidified to fur; she felt the needle-sharp milk teeth.

“Will you join me?”

“I can’t.”

“Why, dear Rossignol?”

She did not expect the question. “I simply can’t—that’s all.”

He dashed some spray toward her with the heel of his hand. “Afraid of the cold? It is not so bad.” He submerged his hand in the water, extended it toward her, dripping. “Here, feel.”

She grasped his frigid fingers and quickly released them, then dried her hand on the other sleeve. “I don’t want to get my dress wet,” she explained. “If I take off my shoes, the hem of my dress will drag in the water. I can’t roll it up as you have your pant legs.”

“Quelle domage.”

“Yes.”

Pivoting, he addressed the sky like an audience. “I am here,” he announced. “I am walking in the Red Sea.
The Red Sea!
” he trumpeted. Two fishermen mending nets turned to stare. He scooped up a handful of water and licked it. “Salty! Saltier than salt cod or tapenade.”

Beyond him, a dull red fishing boat was nearing the beach, its dingy lateen sails loosely furled. Two men plied primitive oars, poles with a circular piece of wood lashed at one end.

Shivering, Gustave walked out of the surf, dried his feet with his shirttails, then replaced his boots. They continued north. He began to hum, occasionally singing words to a tune she didn’t know. She felt happy. They did not have to talk. She did not have to answer questions. The breeze was bracing, while the sun, hovering to the west above the town, warmed her left shoulder and the back of her neck.

They reached the natural jetty of the cove, a rocky scarp where children jumped, shrieking, into the chilly water. The beach was broad and fully exposed, with mounds of shells bleaching in the sun at the high tide line. Closer to the surf, bubbling holes where crabs and mollusks lived appeared at each recession of the waves.

Flo hurried up the dune. “Look!” she cried. “I’ve never seen so
many shells in one spot.” She dropped to her knees and immediately found half of a blue-black pen shell flashing iridescent rainbows of nacre. “Oh, I wish we had thought to bring a basket or camel bag. We have nothing to put them in.”

Gustave silently unbuttoned his shirt and arranged it into a makeshift sack. She tried not to stare, but other than natives, she had rarely seen bare-chested men—only field hands at the Hurst in summer, and then from afar. Gustave’s chest was rosy, like his cheeks, with a perfect fan of hair between his breasts that narrowed to a furry chevron at his midline and disappeared beneath his trousers. His clavicle was as cleanly chiseled as a statue’s, the shoulders pleasantly rounded. Like fruit, she thought, feeling the idea in her mouth. And nothing at all like Richard, who was shorter and who, when not lolling on the furniture or floor, moved in fits and starts, like a small dog.

“Such riches, Rossignol,” he said, kneeling beside her. He had tied the shirtsleeves into a soft handle for the bag, which he placed between them before scooping up two clattering handfuls from the trove.

The shells might have been a stash of anything rare or delectable: jewels, gold coins, bonbons, puppies. Flo felt something in herself creak open and give way, like the door to a secret room. It seemed that she left her body or it left her. The two of them played with the mindless absorption of children.